Governor Alexey Ostrovsky visited to the future flax processing plant site in the Safonovo State Industrial Park, where pre-construction has been already started.
According to the Executive Director of Russian Linen Ltd. Andrey Karachev, the new production activities will be aimed at manufacturing high-quality competitive domestic products for import substitution and export. The investor also informed the Head of the region that the company became a resident of the Safonovo Industrial Park in March of this year.
It is expected that the new production complex at a cost of about 2 billion rubles will process 10 thousand tons of flax straw, while the production output of flax mixed yarn will amount to 4 thousand tons a year. The social effect will be the creation of more than 220 new jobs. When reaching a full capacity, this will allow the flax plant becoming the largest flax processing enterprise in the Russian Federation.
As the raw material base for the yarn production, there will be used cotton flax and fine long flax fiber, which are most in demand on the market. At the same time, priority is given to local suppliers — the Russian Linen company is ready to conclude contracts for the flax fiber purchase in the Smolensk Region, and to start independent cultivating a long flax fiber, focused on producing flax straw. So, the investor has already organized a testing site of 68 ha in the Vyazma District.
Currently, there has been started pre-construction. In particular, there was leveled and partly prepared the construction area, as well as was constructed the first launch complex including two warehouses for flax straw, a laboratory and a weighing station. The total building area is 15 ha.
«The first start-up facility including two flax straw warehouses, a weighing station and a laboratory will start its operation in September. In the near future, we will launch the first flax straw storing area; today, we are laying asphalt there. The second warehouse will be ready by the end of this month. There are plans to put the flax processing plant into operation in the fourth quarter of next year. We also plan to build in 2 – 3 years a yarn factory on the remaining area of 20 ha, which we rented in the Industrial Park » explained Andrey Karachev.
According to Andrey Karachev, 250 million rubles have already been invested into the project implementation, of which 150 million rubles are the investor own funds. In addition, there is being provided support at the federal center level. So, in May 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia agreed on a preferential investment loan amounting to 1 billion rubles at an interest rate of up to 5% for the complex construction, and also made a positive decision to include the company in the register of the investment loan-subscribers. This was made possible by the agreements reached during the bilateral meeting of the Governor Alexey Ostrovsky with the Minister of Agriculture in April.